Earlier in
this month’s series of podcasts, I spent some time looking at operetta as the
light-hearted cousin of what we have come to call “Grand Opera”. At that time,
I had hinted to a relationship between operetta and the Musical Comedy, a genre
that has taken root on American stages and on the Silver Screen.

The Musical
has its fair share of – shall I say – bold and ambitious works, in a scale not
unlike operetta or opera. The works that come to mind are Show Boat
(Hammerstein and Kern) and West Side Story (Sondheim, Laurents and Bernstein).
We could add – for not too dissimilar reasons – Hair (Rado, Ragni and MacDermott),
Jesus Christ, Superstar (Rice and Lloyd-Webber) or even Rent
(Larson) or Tommy (The Who) all credited as “Rock Operas.

Many of the
stated works are indeed ambitious, but they were all designed (at least,
originally) as “musicals” and not as operas, though some of these works have
been staged by opera companies.

However,
there are few stages in New York City available to mount operas. There’s the
Met, the New-York City Opera, or even some of the music schools which offer
opera training programs. As a result, it should not be surprising that there
have been operas staged on theatres that line the Great White Way. Gershwin’s
Porgy and Bess had its original 1035 New-York run on Broadway (Alvin
Theatre), for example. According to an article, written in 1946, Kurt Weill,
expressed rthis opinion:

When I
first came to the United States eleven years ago, I became rapidly convinced
that the Broadway legitimate stage is to the American public what the opera and
concert halls are to the European. With that thought in mind, I have repeatedly
aimed my music at the Broadway stage, and today I am convinced that the
American public is ready to accept its own form of grand opera on the
legitimate stage. […] In Europe, opera houses and legitimate theatres are
subsidized by the state. I was able to compose for them and be assured of a
hearing for my works. By the time I was twenty-six I had operas in virtually
every major companyís repertoire in Germany. But I was playing to a limited
public. My adaptation of the Three Penny Opera (on The Beggar's Opera theme)
and its world success opened my eyes to the vast possibilities in an audience
which did not seek opera as its daily fare.

Another
composer who understood this equation was the Italian-American Gian-Carlo
Menotti. According to NPR music commentator Miles Hoffman,
"Menotti thought it was crucial to bring opera to a large popular
audience. He once wrote, 'If I insist on bringing my operas to Broadway, it is
simply because of the letters I receive which begin, "Dear Mr. Menotti, I
have never seen an opera until tonight." ' "

Menotti’s The
Consul opened at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on Broadway in 1949, earning
him not only a Broadway hit but also a Pulitzer Prize.

A couple of
years earlier, between May and November 1947, the Ethel Barrymore Theatre
presented 212 performances of an operatic double-feature of The Medium and The
Telephone, both short oiperas by Menotti (Internet Broadway Database reference here). Before that, the pair was staged at the Heckscher Theatre by The Ballet Society
in February of that year.

Today’s
podcast presents this double-bill, featuring the 1947 Broadway cast in a studio
recording supervised by Menotti and conducted by Emanuel Balaban. The two works
could not be more different in terms of atmosphere. Aptly programmed for our
Hallowe’en podcast, The Medium, introduces us to a woman who has posed
as a person who can contacts spirits (but is shown to use trickery) starting to
hear voices and feel phantom presences she cannot explain. The Telephone
is a light-hearted piece where a man comes to his girlfriend's apartment to
propose, only to find her preoccupied with talking on the telephone.

Both works
have their twist endings – albeit the a propos ending in the tragic
Medium is predictable. The works are sung in English, so I can dispense with a
detailed synopsis. Here are some links to synopses and libretti for these operas:

This week’s
podcast completes our very modest look at Richard Wagner begun on
Tuesday’s Vinyl’s Revenge post. As a tie-in between the two, the
podcast begins with another excerpt from the opera Tannhäuser, the
Festive March from the closing bars of Act II.

Where
casual listeners criticize Wagner’s operatic output, more often than not length
and plot complexity bubble to the surface. For the most part, Wagner’s works
are set in the world of myth and legend – Tannhäuser being an excellent
example. However, no work rivals in breath, length and plot complexity with the
four-part Ring des Nibelungen, "ein Bühnenfestspiel für drei Tage
und einen Vorabend" (a stage festival drama for three days and a
preliminary evening). The cycle is a work of extraordinary scale and sheer
length: a full performance of the cycle takes place over four nights at the
opera, with a total playing time of about 15 hours.

Yikes!

Wagner's
title is most literally rendered in English as The Ring of the Nibelung.
The Nibelung of the title is the dwarf Alberich, and the ring in question is
the one he fashions from the Rhine Gold. The title therefore denotes
"Alberich's Ring". The scale and scope of the story is epic,
following the struggles of gods, heroes, and several mythical creatures over
the eponymous magic ring that grants domination over the entire world. The
drama and intrigue continue through three generations of protagonists, until
the final cataclysm at the end of Götterdämmerung.

As a
significant element in the Ring (and his subsequent works), Wagner adopted the
use of leitmotifs. These are recurring themes and/or harmonic
progressions. They musically denote an action, object, emotion, character or
other subject mentioned in the text and/or presented onstage. Wagner referred
to them in "Opera and Drama" as "guides-to-feeling", and
described how they could be used to inform the listener of a musical or
dramatic subtext to the action onstage in the same way as a Greek chorus did
for the theatre of ancient Greece.

In today’s
podcast, I retained two selections from the Ring. The first, the infamous “Ride
of the Valkyries” is taken out of an operatic performance, with the lyric
sopranos providing the battle cry. The second selection happens to be the
ultimate scene from the fourth and final opera. In a sense, it is a microcosm
of the story, complete with a recap of the many leitmotifs Wagner used
throughout the cycle to situate his characters.

Equally
ambitious in its own right, Parsifal – Wagner’s last completed work,
premiered in 1882, the year before his death - is the story of a young man
whose virtue and compassion become the salvation of the Knights of the Holy
Grail. He wards off temptation and danger to regain the spear with which
Christ's side was pierced on the cross; in the process he heals the king,
Amfortas, of a cursed wound, and relieves the fallen woman, Kundry, from her
eternal wandering.

The podcast
combines digital-era recordings and vintage classic performances by the likes
of Kirsten Flagstad, Monserrat Caballe, and Lauritz Melchior, as well as Arturo
Toscanini (featured in the last selection, the fanfare Prelude to Act III of Lohengrin)

Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Vinyl's Revenge returns this month with a nearly 35 year old release by the Philips label, which will act as a segue to this week's Friday Blog and Podcast featuring Richard Wagner operatic selections (read our below "teaser" for links).My vinyl collection has three Wagner LPs, all of "orchestral favourites": the unavoidable "Highlights from the Ring" (George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra, CBS "Great Performances" re-issue), an analogue disc of Wagner overtures (Silvio Varviso and Staatskapelle Dresde, Philips FESTIVO re-issue) and today's album, an early Digital recording from the Concertgebouw led by Netherlands native conductor Edo De Waart.De Waart studied oboe, piano and conducting at the Sweelinck Conservatory, graduating in 1962. In 1964, at the age of 23, de Waart won the Dimitri Mitropoulos Conducting Competition in New York. As part of his prize, he served for one year as assistant conductor to Leonard Bernstein at the New York Philharmonic. On his return to the Netherlands, he was appointed assistant conductor of the Concertgebouw Orchestra under Bernard Haitink.My first recolllections of maestro De Waart were his leading the San Francisco Symphony in the inaudural concert of the Davies concert Hall in 1980 or 81. He has since been associated with the Minnesota Orchestra, Sydney Symphony, Milwaukee Symphony and the Royal Flemish Philharmonic. As for the disc itself, it stays well-within the arcs of your typical Wagner Overtures disc, with the Tannhäuser overture (with the Venusberg extension), Flying Dutchman and the less-frequently heard overture to Wagner's first mature opera, Die Feen. As for many recordings of this era, this first-generation digital recoirding feels cold and rough around the edges, but the reading of the score is clear and the great Concertgebouw orchestra delivers art all the right places.Happy Listening!

Operetta is a genre of light opera, light in terms both of music and subject matter. It is
also closely related, in English-language works, to forms of musical theatre.
Camille Saint-Saëns once described operetta in these terms: " [operetta] is a daughrter of the opéra-comique
that didn't quite turn out right. However, girls that didn't turn out right aren't always without fun".Though it is a genre made popular in France (notably by German transplant Jacques Offenbach), operetta was alive
and well in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Its most significant composer in the
genre was Johann Strauss II; his first operetta was Indigo und die vierzig Räuber (1871). His third operetta, Die Fledermaus (1874), became the most
performed operetta in the world, and remains his most popular stage work. Its
libretto was based on a comedy written by Offenbach's librettists. In all,
Strauss wrote 16 operettas and one opera, most with great success when first
premiered.

This week’s
podcast finds its roots in an old CBC Records CD entitled “Oktoberfest Operetta”,
which featured the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony Orchestra under its then-music
director, the Egyptian-born, Vienna-trained and adoptive Canadian conductor
Rafi Armenian.

Certainly
here in Canada, Oktoberfest is celebrated over a 9-day period ending on our
Thanksgiving holiday (which was this past 3-day weekend), and the greater
Kitchener-Waterloo area is the prime destination; since 1969,
Kitchener-Waterloo Oktoberfest has developed its own traditions, becoming the
largest Bavarian festival in North America with the greatest Thanksgiving Day
Parade in Canada. Through the celebration of this Spirit of Gemuetlichkeit, the
local economy is stimulated and over 70 charities and not-for-profit organizations
raise funds to support the high quality of life enjoyed in Kitchener-Waterloo.

The area
has gained fame over the years, thanks greatly to the University of Waterloo,
renowned for its Math and Computer programs that – among others – gave us the Blackberry.
However, K-W has a long-standing German tradition, starting after the American
Revolution and the migration of Loyalists and especially German Mennonite
farming families from Pennsylvania. They wanted to live in an area that would
allow them to practice their beliefs without persecution.One of
these Mennonite families, arriving in 1807, were the Schneiders, whose restored
1816 home (the oldest building in the city) is now a museum located in the
heart of Kitchener.Immigration to the town increased considerably
from 1816 until the 1870s, many of the newcomers being of German (particularly
Lutheran, and Mennonite) extraction. In 1833 the town was named Berlin, and in
1853 Berlin became the County Seat of the newly created County of Waterloo,
elevating it to the status of Village.

Anti-German
sentiment during the First World War led to the abandonment of much of this
heritage and in 1916, following much debate and controversy, the name of the
city was changed to Kitchener, after the late British Field Marshal The 1st
Earl Kitchener.

Our podcast
begins and ends with selections from Fledermaus and Der Zigeunerbaron (1885). Both sets of selections come from the
aforementioned disc by Armenian and the K-W Symphony Orchestra.

The
Armenian disc featured selected songs from two operattas and I chose to “expand”
on these by embedding larger medleys of these.

The
Viennese operatic tradition was carried on by Oscar Straus, Carl Zeller,
Karl Millöcker, Leo Fall, Richard Heuberger,
Edmund Eysler, Ralph Benatzky, Robert Stolz,
and Nico Dostal. Emmerich Kálmán and Franz Lehár were the leading composers
of what has been called the "Silver Age" of Viennese operetta during
the first quarter of the 20th century. Kálmán became well known for his fusion
of Viennese waltz with Hungarian csárdás. Gräfin
Mariza (Countess Mariza) is an operetta in three acts composed by Kálmán,
with a libretto by Julius Brammer and Alfred Grünwald. It premiered in Vienna
on 28 February 1924. In this operetta, Count Tassilo has lost his job and his
entire fortune. And so Countess Mariza, on whose lands he has sought refuge as
an estate manager, initially shows him little respect. An attractive and
successful woman herself, she can barely fend off her many troublesome
admirers. Only gradually does she realize that it is actually the poor but
proud estate manager whom she loves…

Die lustige
Witwe (The Merry Widow) is an operetta by Lehár, with librettists, Viktor Léon
and Leo Stein, an 1861 comedy play, L'attaché d'ambassade (The Embassy Attaché)
by Henri Meilhac. The story concerns a rich widow, and her countrymen's attempt
to keep her money in the principality by finding her the right husband. The
operetta has enjoyed extraordinary international success since its 1905
premiere in Vienna and continues to be frequently revived and recorded. Film
and other adaptations have also been made. Well-known music from the score
includes the "Vilja Song", "Da geh' ich zu Maxim", and the
"Merry Widow Waltz".

As part of our look at opera through this month, I plan to
spend some time showcasing the works of a pair of operatic giants of the 19th
century: Richard Wagner representing
the German tradition, and Giuseppe Verdi
representing the Italian tradition. Missing is the French tradition – which could probably be suitably represented by
either Jules Massenet or Charles Gounod. Maybe some other time…

Giuseppe Verdi was to opera in the Italian tradition what
Beethoven was to the symphony. When he arrived on the scene some had suggested
that effective opera after Rossini
was not possible. Verdi, however, took the form to new heights of drama and
musical expression. Partisans see him as at least the equal of Wagner, even
though his style and musical persona were of an entirely different cast. In the
end, both Verdi's popular vein—as heard in the operas Rigoletto, Il trovatore,
and La traviata—and his deeper
side—found in Aida, Otello, and Falstaff—demonstrate his mastery and far-reaching development of
Italian opera.

Verdi has graced our pages earlier this year in the form of
his Requiem Mass, and will come back next month when we pay tribute to
Carlo Bergonzi – we also featured Verdi operas (Aida, Traviata and Trovatore)
on Once or Twice a Fortnight.

For the moist part, the works I chose to underscore in today’s
podcast feature both orchestral pages (like overtures) and arias from my personal
collection. The first work featured, La
forza del destino, opens with my very favourite Verdi overtire, and this is
my very favourite performance, taken from a WWII-era documentary featuring the
great Toscanini and his NBC Symphony. The recording integrated into the podcast
isn’t of the best audio quality, but the performance is remarkable for how
distinctly Toscanini singles out sections of the orchestra.

There are instances of Verdi operas that were either
restaged or entirely redone for Parisian audiences. Jérusalem is a heavily revised version of Verdi's third opera, I Lombardi Alla Prima Crociata. Not only
is the music rewritten substantially and the libretto different, but the text
is in French. In the end, the work so pleased Verdi that he had the new version
translated back into Italian! As it was the custom, Verdi included sometimes
elaborate ballet sequences for Parisian use– the podcast includes the ballet scene
from Jérusalem.

Many of the Verdi selections found here, including the
highlights from Act I of La Traviata, come from a DECCA compilation called Viva Verdi! Issued as a 2 CD set for the
centenary of Verdi’s death in 2001.

Our October
programming on the Friday Blog and Podcast is entirely dedicated to opera, with
some orchestral and sung selections planned for later podcasts, and even some
complete operas. This week, however, we will explore the world of opera
transcriptions for piano.

During the
19th century the piano transcription became popular for several reasons - the bourgeoisie grew in number and wealth,
they were interested in symphonic and chamber music; the availability, quality,
and affordability of attending ensemble music was not able to keep pace with
this interest. Since recording technology would need another hundred years to
catch up and that pianos were commonplace in the houses of wealthy people, piano
transcriptions filled this gap with transcribers turning old and new popular
works into arrangements involving one or two players.

Two of my
earliest posts for OperaLively
explored this very subject, with a particular look at transcriptions by Franz
Liszt and Sigismond
Thalberg who not only made their mark in this genre, but were also the
two dominant virtuosi of their era. As I said in those posts, it is quite
natural for them to have used opera as the seed for their inspiration, as these
were popular “tunes” for the day, and thus a familiar point of departure for
them to show off their talents – both as virtuosi and as musical thinkers.

The sources
for these transcriptions include some the 19th century’s prominent
opera composers: Wagner, Rossini and Donizetti. I also inserted an excerpt of music from Glinka’s “A Life for the Tsar”
(re-imagined by Balakirev). Other
than Thalberg and Liszt, some of the transcribers include Moritz Moszkowski and Henri Herz, who could also impress
audiences with their own piano virtuosity.

As luck
would have it, the works on today’s program were entrusted to a pair of great
piano virtuosi of the 20th century: Cuban pianist Jorge Bolet and
American pianist Earl Wild. In both cases, these kinds of virtuoso showpieces
found their way into their live recitals (as some of the audience reaction
attests).